Hand-made field easel

Before the thanksgiving holiday starts, I started working on a hand-made field easel. My motivation and reason why I decided making my own are....
- My french easel is heavy and hard to set up in the field in some cases.
- Better field easels available on the market are 1) expensive, and 2) designed only for small canvas boards, 9"x11" or smaller.
So, my key objectives for this handmade easel are:
a) relatively light weight
b) for 12"x16" stretched canvas
c) attached on a tripod

I researched some more on the internet and found an artist's YouTube site showing how to make an own tripod easel. I modified his idea to fit my objectives above. Then started building it. So far I encountered some hurdles to clear, like how to firm the rod to hold the top of the stretched canvas and a mechanizm to fix the angle of the canvas vertically. I'm clearing those issues one by one now.

Changing my mind...

I changed my mind and put under painting on top of previous layer. With this way I don't have to worry about bare white gessoed portions left between colored parts. Basically I tried complementary colors but not consistent. The dried grass part became too dark, which is making me a little worrying that if this would work when I put local light colors. We'll see.

Putting my signature before finishing

As usual, I put my signature before finishing this piece. Actually I put my signature on the all three pieces of this series.
I still can't be satisfied with the colors of all cow's bodies. I put more reddish-purplish colors for lighter part. But I felt it didn't quite right. Also felt too light.

Not much more to add for "A"

Although it's hard to see the colors in this photo, I'm satisfied with the background of this side. Making some adjustment with shapes of the cows. But not much. I'm almost done with this piece.

Layout is done

Rough positioning of major shapes are decided. I can jump into thicker paint application any time. As long as I can come up with the right colors though. Also I need to think about the direction of lights. It was late morning or early afternoon. Sun was high and a little behind me.

Getting into details - Stampede Series

Gradually getting into details for tone changes of cows and shapes of their paws. I'm still looking for the right mixture of paints for lighter colors of their bodies. That would be the key of this series to pull viewers onto the paintings.